Cartier-Bresson ‘Scrapbook’ opens in Paris

Kunang Helmi, Contributor, Paris

Photography lovers have a rare chance to take a glimpse into the work of famous French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, thanks to an exhibition now underway at the HCB Foundation in Paris.

The exhibition features 359 photos, including 331 prints made by Cartier-Bresson in 1946. The current show will run until Dec. 23, 2006. A similar exhibition is scheduled to take place at the International Center for Photography in New York from Jan. 14 to the end of April 2007.

Born in 1908, Cartier-Bresson married an Indonesian dancer, Carolina-Jeanne de Souza, known as Retna Mohini or Ratna, in 1936. However, it was not until 1949 that he and Ratna were present in Indonesia, the year that the young republic’s independence was officially recognized by the Dutch. In 1968, however, Cartier-Bresson divorced Ratna to marry Belgian photographer Martine Franck in 1970. He died in August 2004.

A large selection of those photos now on display in Paris were displayed to the Indonesian public in Jakarta, Yogyakarta and Ubud in the 2002 show: Henri Cartier-Bresson — Indonesia 1949.

After studying to be a painter, Cartier-Bresson was intent on capturing life’s decisive instants while framing a precise image with a camera. Always a humane photographer, he treated men, women and children with equal dignity in a natural way, whether they were rich or poor, whether famous or unknown. Never without a sense of humor and rapid as lightning, he immortalized many occasions, realizing the importance of historical moments as well as the innate beauty of certain scenes. Despite coming from a rich family, he avoided living in an ostentatious manner and always defended human rights.

Although Cartier-Bresson was a proficient photographer, he seldom printed his own images, except at the beginning of his photographic career. Afterwards he did so exceptionally in 1946 for the now legendary photo album known simply as Scrapbook. This album was indeed crucial for his future as a photojournalist. The images chosen were intended for the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.

In 1943, Nancy and Beaumont Newhall of MoMA planned to organize a “posthumous” show of Cartier-Bresson’s work, as he was thought to have died in World War II. In reality Cartier-Bresson had escaped from a German prison and was living clandestinely in France with false papers. The photographer was amused to find out, after the war ended in 1945, that Newhall thought he was dead, particularly when he heard that a major exhibition was being planned.

This was the occasion for a mature reflection on his past work. Cartier-Bresson chose what he considered to be the most significant images. In 1946, he printed 346 photos which were then pasted into a scrapbook album before showing them to the curators. Nancy and Newhall were waiting in New York where he traveled with his wife Ratna, also called Eli by intimate friends. Most photos were unpublished at the time but are now unforgettable classics by the great artist.

Cartier-Bresson’s choice was of black and white photos he took between 1932 and 1946, beginning with Marseille, in the South of France, where he bought his first Leica camera, and then Paris. Afterwards came Italy, the civil war in Spain, Mexico, political photos taken during the period of the Front Populaire, the coronation of King George VI in London and the return of prisoners of war from Germany. The images reflect the personal evolution of a man who began painting with Andre Lhote because he considered himself to be a painter and not a photographer.

In the selection, one also finds his famous portraits of French painters like Henri Matisse, Georges Braque and Pierre Bonnard and writers Paul Claudel, Jean-Paul Sartre and Paul Eluard, which he took for the publishing house Braun and for various magazines of that period, like Regards and famous photo magazine VU, founded by Andre Vogel. There is one image that shows Ratna and him mirrored in a window pane. The photos reflect the influence of surrealist art forms on his work in the 1930s, but he was also affected by the world of cinema. He had studied film-making with Paul Strand in America before working as an assistant for famous French film-maker Jean Renoir between 1936 and 1939.

Together with curators Nancy and Newhall, Cartier-Bresson selected 163 images which were printed in a large format under his supervision. The exhibition was inaugurated at MoMA New York on Feb. 4, 1947, shortly before Cartier-Bresson co-founded the renowned Magnum photo agency in New York on May 22, 1947, with Robert Capa and David Seymour.

At the beginning of 1990s, Cartier-Bresson realized how important these original images, then considered vintage prints, had become. He unglued many prints from the album to protect them from damage, leaving only 13 pages in the original format. The prints were then restored carefully and are now part of the HCB Foundation collection in Paris.

In the current exhibition, 102 of 331 prints made by Cartier-Bresson in 1946 are still on the original pages of the album and exhibited behind glass, such as the page displaying Henri Matisse in the South of France. Fifteen modern prints of the same format (9×12 cm) replace prints which are missing, together with 6 large prints dating from his early period (1932 — 1946). These are completed by seven huge prints glued on wood, which were lent by MoMA.

To celebrate the exhibitions in Paris and New York, a catalog was published by renowned art publishers Steidl and the HCB Foundation. Replicating the original Scrapbook pages, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Scrapbook is completed by an article by photo historian Michel Frizot together with documents of that period. The book won the prestigious 2006 Nadar book prize in France.

The original 1947 show at the MoMA caused a great sensation. Cartier-Bresson became an instant celebrity after being proclaimed as an “artist historian”. His freedom of movement, acute vision and lack of a purely technical approach fascinated Americans. Cartier-Bresson established a novel way of perceiving things, later earning him the title “Eye of the Century” in his official biography by Pierre Assouline in 2001.

However, at the time fellow photographer Robert Capa warned Cartier-Bresson not to seek characterization as the “young surrealist photographer” because he then would be constricted professionally by that image. Cartier-Bresson did have a small first show at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York in 1932 where his work was hailed as being surrealist. This was shortly followed by a similar show at the Club Atheneo in Madrid. The reason why Capa advised him to become what is now known as a photojournalist was to enjoy more flexibility in photography.

After the MoMA show Cartier-Bresson was commissioned to work for magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar, Paris Match, Queen, Life magazine, Vogue and others until he retired in 1965.

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